YouSaid · the spoken record

Anton Levy

lines on the record: 43
first: 2021-10-05
most recent: 2021-10-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Sort of the comment earlier about pressing my. Now, this wasn't a winner I was pressing because I was basically on the sidelines watching them win. And so finally, after doing that for a decade, I just said, you know what? Enough of watching from the sidelines. I got to get involved here. And so I was able to convince them to let me come on as a shareholder.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we're announcing deals all the time, but the last one that I have really driven and led this public announcement is a company called Articulate, which we announced this summer. And they're basically any learning platform. Adam, the founder, would kick me for saying this, but it's a souped-up version. It's sort of PowerPoint for e-learning. He would kick me because it's a much more powerful and maybe elegant product. But it's basically everyday people can create e-learning content. So think about what the explosion of training and learning, you know, how do you make those? Anyway, they've got Articulate is the standard and leading company in that. And the reason I said yes is first of all, it's an incredible business. The business is growing really fast. It's a profitable business. It's got an incredible team. And so a lot of the boxes you would normally check. But as an investor, but the thing that really your point about getting to know people, I've known Adam, who's the founder and Lucy, who's one of the senior principles. I've known them for a decade and I've watched them execute. So this is one where I would meet with the company and try and give advice along the way, but I've met with them years before I was an investor. And they were just continuing to execute.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit of a cheeky answer comes to mind initially, which is you know, it'd be nice if I had a lot less competition. That would be great. But I think that's also the nature of a great business, right? I mean, just like I tell a lot of our companies when we work with them, which is competition means you have a great business. People are going to come after you. People are going to start companies if you're in a great space. Same thing with the venture space and the tech investment space more broadly, which is there is so much opportunity. It's such a big market that all of the competition is a reflection of what a great market opportunity is. It's not a winner-take-all market. There's going to be, I think, at least a handful of winners and probably many, many more than that. But I think if you could say, hey, I could wake up tomorrow and have, you know, 10% of the competitors, that would be fun for a while.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, we are so lucky to be doing what we're doing both yourself, but for sure myself. And so I don't know if there's anything that's so hard about what we do. I think the hardest thing is just managing time. There are so many different ways to deploy your time. I could pick any one company I work with and probably spend all my time and be completely stimulated by that and excited to do that. But how do I choose of the 50 things I could do today? What are the five to ten they're going to really matter? And how do I really focus on those? And so I think time management is by far the hardest part of the job.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, actually, that wasn't the deal I should get most of the credit for. It should be my junior team or this, that, and the other. And people just want to work with people they really like. And again, people blow themselves up and get fired from firms and ejected from firms because they try to play this like political game or get a head game. And so anyway, long answered your question because I know this is a short, really fast lightning round, which I'm failing miserably at the lightning round.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They get in the wrong markets, they put out a shitty product, and getting that right team is almost everything at the end of the day. Even in a crappy market or crappy business model, the great teams will fix those. So a lot of it does come down to team. And so that was one. And then the other piece of advice from this individual was, you know, he said people want to work with people they want to work with. And again, you were probably sitting there saying that's the dumbest piece of advice I've ever heard. Of course people want to work with people they want to work with. But what I realized is, you know, over the years why that's such an important piece of advice, Harry, is that what you realize is most people are smart enough to do the jobs we do. It's not an IQ test or incredibly smart people out there and they work hard and they're dedicated, but people don't like them. A lot of times, you know, I think a lot of people watch movies and they say, oh, that, you know, that person who's sort of political and smart and sort of stabs someone in the back at the exact right moment is going to get ahead. And in my experience, nothing's further from the truth. The people that people want to work with are nice people who do the right things who don't give themselves credit for everything, maybe even that they deserve credit for. They give extra credit to other people who around them and say,”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My closest advisor, probably one of the parts I've had on so many, first of all, I've had so lucky to have so many close advisors and mentors over the years. You know, I'd say my closest advisor, original principal's at General Atlantic. And what he taught me, he said two things that when I mentioned to you, Harry, you're going to roll your eyes and say, that's the dumbest advice I've ever heard. At least that's what I thought initially. And I've realized there are two of the most thoughtful, valuable pieces of advice I've ever. One is that he told me, he said, great management teams do great things and bad management teams do bad things. And he's going, God, that's a stupid thing to say. Of course bad management teams do bad things and good management teams do good things. But as I've spent down decades in this business, nothing is more accurate. So, you know, what that means is basically when you have a great team who's innovating, creating new products, hiring great people, expanding in new markets, acquiring companies smartly. It's just when you can put a great team together. It just makes value happen. And you can give advice and counsel and bad management teams just continually make bad decisions. They exit the wrong product.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was just incredibly sad, but also incredibly beautiful. And you know, I think about doing the right thing in honor. And, you know, it's very meaningful. Is this a romantic gift I should send potential? In this story, you know, you and I are the, you know, Anton is such a soulmates.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want to move into a quick file, my friend? So, I say a short statement and you give me Okay, so what's the favorite book and why, Anton? Favorite book, one that may not be that popular, but a book called Bridges of Terabithia. Huh. Never had it before. It's an amazing story. But basically, the reason for the why, and it's a beautiful story and a bunch of other things, but that's not why it's my favorite book. It's basically about loyalty, honor, and love. And basically what happens is it's a woman who's married to her husband and she meets another traveler at a time where her husband was traveling and she falls madly in love with him. And basically she finds her soulmate. But she doesn't leave her husband. I mean, literally they have the most beautiful love story, but as the book progresses, she's like, I won't leave my husband and my kids. Even though you are my soulmate, she basically sacrifices. I'm not doing a great job describing it because I'm making it sound sort of like a sad story. But it actually is beautiful where she just says, I am going to choose others over myself, even though what would make me happiest is to be with the soulmate of mine. I've got the honor and commitment that I've made to my family.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me answer your question specifically. I've got a lot of misses, but look, a big one that stings I had a full shot on goal ready to go handshake deal to invest in Facebook early on, which doesn't sound that early, but at a $5 billion values, right before Yuri Milner invested a $10 billion. And this was sort of February 2009. Obviously, that would have been a life-changing, firm-changing investment. We've done great. We've done lots of other winners. And in terms of process, I don't know it's so much that our process had changed because we had a healthy debate about it. I think the lesson from that is when you have conviction, you know, don't be talked out of it by others and saying, well, on the one hand this or what could go wrong, I think it's really taking the weight of your convictions and not letting people talk you out. It's always good to listen to what smart people have to say. But when you have conviction even after listening to them, I should have more fully pounded the table to drive that through. It's one of his interviews around, like, I have so much more to ask, but I'm also deadly aware that 20 minute VC is just egregiously much longer nowadays.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yours. I said a couple things just to set up, and then I'll give you the exact answer you're looking for. One is that if you've been in long tech for 20 plus years like I have, there are a lot of misses. So the list is long. I mean, I probably have just sort of should have done everything. I probably would have done decently being long tech the last 25 years. I'd say the second comment, which is actually I think in some ways the biggest misses are not doing more of your winners. So, you know, I was lucky enough to vest in Alibaba out of China back in 1998 where people were like, who's this company from Hangzhou that no one's, I mean, first of all, no one heard of Hangzhou? And second of all, no one had heard particularly in the West of Alibaba. And, you know, we ended up investing $75 million into the business at that time. And, you know, I probably had pushed it, could have put $300 million into it, but I was like $75 million. We don't really know this company. So some of the misses are not the misses, right? It's companies you did that made incredible returns, but you had the option if you could go back in time to say fully back up the bus in the winners or Snapchat or any of these early stage investments that had really worked. So that's one some of the misses. Now, that's...”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The right business because you're not going to win the next deal for people who have tons of options if you're not a person who leads by example that people want to partner with. So I think that's also the future of our business. I think a lot of the jerks get ejected from the system because you're going to call around and people are going to say that guy Anton, you don't want to work with him. I disagree with that. There's still fucking team. Hopefully, they're working their way through the system. I hope so too. I do want to have one final question before we move on. Your biggest miss. What was your biggest miss? We were useless as an They just sucked”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People. So, people don't work hard and stay at places where they don't respect the culture and the firm. So the right long-term answer. So the short answer is it's all about people. The long answer is in order to get those people and set the culture and set the tone, you need to live it. The leaders of the firm need to live the culture and need to do the right thing always. And, you know, that's what comes across, I think, from entrepreneurs, because in a LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok world where everybody's one degree of separation from someone else, all the best companies in the world can raise money in 15 minutes, particularly today. And so why are they going to take your money instead of my money? Yes, maybe you're 10% cheaper or 20% more expensive or whatever the case may be, but they're going to reference you and they're going to say, what's hairy like? What's Anton like as a partner? And everybody knows everybody who releases a phone call or a click away from everyone. They don't need my money. They've got 20 people calling on them to give them capital. And so one is it's good to do the right thing because we're all good people.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a couple things would be my advice to you, Harry. I mean, one is I think you got to lead by example. So, whatever the behavior you want in the culture, you need to live it. You can't just talk about it. You can't write about it. People need to see you doing it. So if you want to build a firm that transcends generations, you're going to have to often do things that might not be in your short-term interests that are in your long-term interest, which means always doing the right thing. And the reason that's in your interest to do that is that's who the great people want to work for. The great people are going to want to work for people they respect who do the right thing and are good people. And, you know, you kind of may rail your eyes at that and say, at least when I started a GA, if you had said to me, people want to work for people that, you know, they respect and do the right thing, you'd be like, no, they don't. They just want to make a lot of money or, you know, whatever. Other short term or even medium-term thing. And I can tell you, that's not the case. I mean, it is maybe for, you know, your very first couple years and a job, but once what you realize is, look, our business and the tech business is the benefit of having a great business model and has created lots of economics.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You credit in today's price for that, I think we've gotten much more competitive in competing for those deals because we're willing to give some credit in our underwriting case.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we needed some of that. When I say some of it, I think we've been willing to accept some additional risk. I mean, I think we're still never going to change. We hate losing money as a cultural thing. And I don't want to change that part of our culture. And I don't think we're ever going to change the culture of unit economics matter. But I think what we're doing a better job of Harry, I don't know if we'll go all the way to investing in the upside down unit economics business. I don't think we'll ever do that. That's not how we invest. And I don't think we will. But I think what we've done a better job is giving people credit for things you can't see or underwrite. So it's, hey, we have this platform. Here's how we're monetizing today. I think what we've started to give more and more credit for in our underwriting case is, well, you could roll out more products. You can roll out more modules. You can perhaps increase price. You can start selling advertising where you're not. And I think our creativity around that, we've always had the creativity there as a firm, but we've never been willing to underwrite it. So what happens is some other firm would come in and pay 30% more than we are because they're saying, well, geez, of course at some point you'll sell advertising. And so therefore, I'll give you.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's cultural, is the honest answer. So we hate losing money, which you can say, well, Jesus, you know, you're putting money at risk. In fact, we should probably be taking more risk. You could argue as a firm. Our loss ratio is sub 3%. So I don't know if you are familiar with loss ratios, but loss ratios are for every dollar, $100 you put to work. How many of those dollars do you lose money on? So our loss ratios are very, very low. And that's a cultural thing. And so if you say, listen, there's a chance even on a 30, $50 million check that we might lose all of our capital, we're not going to do it. Because they're a little bit later stage and even some of our earlier stage stuff where we might be stretching 15 or 25 million dollar check. Our loss ratios are low. And I think that's cultural. So the truth is we should probably be taking even more risk than we do if like if product market fit and unit economics aren't fully proven, you know, we're probably more cautious than we should be. But against our culture to say, well,”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was weak, and everyone's like, Oh, yeah, they're terrible. And you're like, Well, interesting. You didn't mention that when we were investing a month ago. When you're an insider, you know where all the bodies are buried. So there's less the surprises. So in that case, often committing a $250 million check to something you've been watching for 18 months, 24 months is actually an easier decision than in some ways committing the 30 or 50 initially because you're like, we hate losing money. So whether it's 30, 50, or 250, we don't like losing money. And so we're more anxious. I'm often more anxious writing the 50 million dollar upfront check than I am the 3, 4, 500 million dollar follow-on check because I know everything and I have perfect information.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Product. I'm watching you roll out Europe. I'm watching you hire a Latin American head, so on and so forth. And then you come and say, hey, yes, it's at a three and a half X price. So it's $3.5x from where we paid 18 months ago. But now I want you to commit $250 million. But this is now an entrepreneur you've watched execute. You've watched rollout new products. So now if I sit there as with the team saying, hey, I think these guys are going to then go from Europe and Latin America. They're going to roll out India and Asia. You're going to say, okay, I believe that. I've seen that happen. I'm not just hearing about that happen. I've seen you execute. And they say, hey, we're going to roll out a new module to this platform and we're going to take ARPU up from X to Y. And he said, you know what? I kind of believe that. You already took your ARPU from X to Y and rolled out two modules. I'm going to actually give you the benefit of the doubt. So in a lot of ways, the risk is lower and you don't need to know that you're going to know. Like a lot of times when you invest, there could be skeletons buried in some closet because the CEO is only telling you all the good things and the other investors are saying, oh, no, this company is amazing. And then you make the investment and you're like, oh, well, I didn't realize you're head of sale.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a good question. We have a different process for sub 75 million dollar checks. We call it internally. It's just an internal name. We call it emerging growth, which are sort of that click earlier but very fast growing checks. And so we have a different decision-making process for that. It's a committee that meets off cycle because often those decisions need to A happen fast and B, they sometimes happen on a Thursday afternoon. You can't say, oh, our traditional investment committee is meeting once a week or whatever the time. So it's a more flexible, faster moving, often diligence is happening in two weeks, not two months and so on and so forth. So it's a faster process that allows us to be more nimble. And the truth is we give more rope to our teams that want to do those checks. And so that one, when you want to write the bigger checks, it's actually easier than you think to commit that kind of capital to your portfolio. And the reason is, Harry, is that you know these companies better than anyone. We've been watching, keep in mind, we've been watching monthly results since we invested. So for instance, I give you a $30 million check and then for the following 18 months, I'm watching you beat your numbers. I'm watching you roll out a new.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investment congrats. That's going to be a great investment. Now, a decade later, it's Harry. How are you going to put more money into that? That's great. They had a good month. Interesting. How can you put more capital in there? How can you go give them money for M&A? You know, does it make sense to expand in Europe? Should you give more money for that? Can you approach and do a preemptive round? Should you look and approach some early stage investors? It's a complete cultural shift to say, how do you press the winners? Because what you realize is the returns on the follow-on checks end up being so much higher return and higher IRR for lower risk. That is becoming more and more the name of the game. And it's completely a complete cultural shift to GA. So that said, the portfolio construction, I still don't think matters as much because it's still going to be a handful of companies who are coming full circle that drive the lion's share of your returns over a vintage.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Similar overall IRRs and returns between two top decile companies. Somewhere in the middle, we make 100 investments for a vintage, somewhere between the 10 and 300, but it's still going to be only 10 to 15 or 20 that matter. At the end of the day, because when we're going to press those, so if we do a bunch of 25, 50, and $75 million checks, 10 or 15 are going to end up big $500 million checks because we're going to press the winners. We're going to say, hey, we gave you 50, but now you're raising $100, or we're going to go and find the early stage investors and say, hey, this is one of your home runs. Let us buy out 50% of your stake or 25% of your stake. We're going to press. It used to be a general Atlantic, Harry, just to give you so much how this discipline has changed. We send around monthly results of our companies and we send them around to a group and we say, here's how all the companies did. You know, ABC company beat their plan by 10%, growing 100% a year. It used to be when you would send those around for a given company or given investment that the reply to this email distribution would be like, Harry, amazing job on ABC.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's been talked about for a long time. I think it's the wrong math to do. And the reason I believe that is that what's going to happen, and I've seen this again, just because I happen to have a front row seat in our business and in other businesses for the last 20 plus years, what happens is even within that portfolio, there's still only going to be 20 that matter. There's going to be 20 investments that matter. Maybe it's less over a vintage. Maybe it's 10. The problem is you don't know which ones they're going to be when we start. So for instance, if you go to a venture fund, a venture fund will often make, you know, two to three hundred investments. There's still going to be 10 that matter that really drive it. They become, you know, if you're a sequoia, become a WhatsApp and iPopping returns in some of those. Well, same thing to a lesser extent in our business. I mean, if you go the other extreme, so if you think sort of here's two extremes, you got the series seed and the series A business, and they're going to make $300 investments and 10 are going to matter, but they're going to have great returns. It's just going to have a lot of high loss ratio. And the other extreme, you may have a traditional big buyout firm, you know, your helmet and Freeman. Maybe they'll make 10 investments. And, you know, that'll be it. And they hope all do decently. And by the way, those two may end up having...”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's inevitable. In terms of what do I want to build, I want to build the best firm with the best culture and back the best entrepreneurs. And I think in order to do that, it's inevitable. We even ourselves, we've moved much earlier stage. So if you look at General Atlantic a decade ago, we used to have a minimum $75 million check. We're now probably, you know, I don't know the exact numbers, but call it 4x the size in terms of capital deployment. And we've taken our $75 million check down to 15 to 20. You say, well, wait a sec. You know, because it used to be, you know, I think a decade ago we're probably deploying like $2 billion a year or whatever the case may be. And you're saying, well, how are you going to move the needle on $2 billion a year of capital if I'm putting $50 million checks? Geez, I got to do so many 50s to get to $2 billion. Well, now we're trending, you know, probably $8 billion, $9 billion plus of capital deployment. And now we're writing 50 to 20s.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're going to save the entrepreneur. I'm going to scale with you. You're never going to outgrow me. You're never going to outgrow my capital. You're never going to outgrow my ability to help you. And by the way, maybe the company doesn't survive that long. Maybe we sell it along the way. But if you want to go the distance, I will buy in your IPO. I will buy in the public markets when you miss a quarter and you're still a great business. And by the way, if the public markets don't value right, I will take you back private and we'll do whatever we want to do outside of the guys of the public markets. And I do think that's where the world is trending.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Data. It's literally somebody sitting across from you and saying, here's my idea. I think that is a different business. I think that's a different risk reward. I think that, you know, much, much, much lower hit rates. I have the most respect for people who are really, really good at that business. The business with no data, I think that little slice is different, but most of the market, everything, because most series A's A investments today, there is revenue. There is ARR. There is a product. There are customers to talk to. And so that means you have data. And so once you have data, a lot of the analyzing of data and talking to entrepreneurs about the data, you talk about cross stage. For me, cross stage is not just Series A, Series B. It's also buying in the IPO. It's buying in the public markets. And by the way, maybe it's even if the public markets aren't valuing you, right? Maybe it's not even taking you private. At the end of the public market and doing a full loop back to the other side. So I do think in 10 years from now, it may be sooner than that, that you're going to have a handful of investment firms that are cross-stage and you're going to show up at the Series A investment.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am more in your world where I think with one exception I'm going to mention in a minute I think there's much more that rhymes than doesn't rhyme. I think you're looking at unit economics and whether you're looking at unit economics if a company's doing three million of ARR or a company's doing 3 billion of ARR, I think unit economics are often unit economics. I think when you look at how big a TAM is in the $10 billion company, the $5 billion company, the $500 million company, the $50 million company, I think the TAM is often the same work to understand TAM competitive landscape, so on and so forth. I think assessing the strengths of a management team often rhyme more than not. You could say, hey, look, you're an incredible entrepreneur to go from zero to $50 million to revenue and you're a different kind of entrepreneur to go from $50 to $500. Those are, again, those same judgment skills, I think, are similar. I think the one that really is different, though, which I think would be the biggest leap of faith for us to get into, is the seed business. I think where you literally show up with a business plan and there's no data. There's no product for me to diligence. There's no unit economics. There's no customers.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their customer wants, but I think those things are easier to copy if people can move fast enough and raise the capital and get the flywheel going. I think it's harder to copy, hey, I'm really going to change outcomes for you. You know, if you're a CEO, I'm going to change outcomes. I'm not just going to give you capital like everyone else. I'm going to create the difference between maybe a 10x opportunity, a 20x opportunity. And that's what we're, look, we don't always get it right, but that's the brand of capital that we're selling.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Capital commoditizes really fast. If you're looking for passive capital and you're saying, give me money at the highest price and leave me alone, I mean, you're nicer about it, so you're not saying leave me alone, but you were kind of saying, leave me alone, just give me the capital. At that point, what really matters to you? What really matters to you is just price. Because everyone's going to leave you alone. Leave you alone is pretty much a commodity. There's not different levels of leave-you alone, at least as far as I can tell. It's pretty much don't call me and leave me alone. And then there's price. And so I think, look, I think firms like Tiger have a brand and real credit to them because they've got good returns. But there are others who have brands in that market. And so I do think that a lot of that competition is coming on price. And I think I would be worried if I was in that business. And I would look for ways to try and differentiate like speed. Like they're saying, hey, we'll give you a term sheet on the first call. And I think the congregation guys are really smart and they've done a great job. But how can they different? So they say, hey, we're really easy to work with. We're really fast. I mean, like we can give you a term sheet on our first call. I'm going to be at a really aggressive price. And they're smart because they're saying that's what.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The honest answer is I don't think so. It doesn't work. We talk about it, so you're right. We definitely talk about it. Does it worry me? I think not so much. I mean, look, we've gone the other ways, so we've reacted to it maybe a little bit. We've moved to being much more active. But the reason I don't, and this can be naive, Harry, we'll be talking here hopefully in friends in a decade from now, and you say, like, remember where you said you weren't so worried about it? That was the wrong call. But the reason I'm not is that in my experience, when I talk to an entrepreneur just like this, unfortunately recently on Zoom calls, and I say, if you want passive capital and you know what you're doing and you've got all the right people you want around the table and you're like, give me the highest price possible, but just kind of, I mean, you're nice about it, but kind of leave me alone. I want passive capital. Or do you want group that can help you scale around the world? Most of the entrepreneurs want help. They want access to our global network. They want access to our pricing experts. They want access to our capital markets experts. They want access to introductions to the biggest companies. And so I'm obviously selling a little bit in this conversation. But I think the path...”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that business can scale a lot because if you think about it, how many people do you need on your investment staff if I'm just giving you the money and I'm doing some diligence and then I'm executing a contract? But then largely I'm letting you do your own thing. I can scale that business just like hedge funds for years have had billions and billions of capital with often five to 10 to 20 people, relatively small number of people because they're passive they don't engage a lot. The other half of the world is the active and that doesn't scale as well. And that's the strategy we've chosen. So I'm a little bit biased, but we get very involved in our companies. We sit on the boards of every company or board observers and all the companies we invest in. We have a huge infrastructure we bring to bear on companies. And this is not a general Atlantic commercial. It's not better or worse. It's just different. If you're an entrepreneur, do you just want my capital at a high price or Atlanta is that kind of joke that a lot of the passive investors have a better business model than we have because they can run their business with five to ten people and do 200”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying to, how can you scale helping companies? And I do think the world is dividing. I think there's two very, very large themes that are going on in the broader tech investing environment. One is that you're seeing a bifurcation into active versus passive. So there are increasingly, and some people will try and straddle the lines, but I think it's a pretty bright line. You're either saying, I'm largely a passive investor, and this is a lot of hedge funds. You know a lot of them that are bringing their public style of investing to the private markets. And as you know, when you buy a public investment, you buy Google, Google doesn't even know you buy their stock. You're in and out. Maybe if you get large enough, you have to make a certain filing with the SEC. You're largely passive. Google doesn't even know your shareholder. That same style of investing to the private markets. And they're saying, listen, we're going to leave you alone. You know what you're doing, Mr. and Mrs. Entrepreneur. Here's a bunch of capital. Call me if you need me or if you have any questions, but send me some results every quarter or whatever the time is, and I'll kind of largely leave you alone. And that is been, I think, where you've seen the larger explosion of capital in the market. You've seen mutual funds, hedge funds, family offices.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in that case, which was an acceleration to tech, but it's going to be something that will lead to a recession. And when you have that recession, the flywheel for a temporary point moment in time, you know, typically recessions last about 22, 23 months. You know, during the recession time, things will contract and valuations will contract typically. But I can't tell you, will it be a click on interest rates? Interest rates may be a result of that event, but I do think you're not going to have this accommodative policy, as accommodative as it is forever. I mean, speaking of the accommodative policy, it allows for deployment speeds to be compressed to levels that unseen previously. We often have 12-month deployment cycles now. I remember when it was three, three and a half years. How do you think about deployment speed? And is it purely a velocity game now? I don't think so. I think there are components of it. I think what matters when you're investing in the stage businesses that I am and we are, and that increasingly, by the way, is cross stage. It's about people. It's about being able to do diligence. And it's about, for a lot of people.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cycles. The idea that a cycles have gone away is, you know, I don't believe. But I also don't think you're going to be able to predict what's going to move out of the cart cycle. What's going to be the vent? You may say to me, Anton, well, you know, what's going to make it go away? Is it higher interest rates is one of the ideas that maybe we're postulating right now. I think it's not going to be something that we're all going to be able to predict where you're going to say, hey, within 12 months, X is going to happen and that's going to be the validation paradigm that shifts into the next down cycle. I think it could be a war. I hope that doesn't happen, but it could be a lot of unexpected things. If you think about what happened in March 2000, if I said, you know, that was the peak of the prior.com boom 1.0. And you said, well, what happened in March 2000? Well, there wasn't really any one singular event in March 2000 that caused that to be the peak. After, you know, a year and three or four months later, you had 9-11, that accelerated the down in the recession. But I will tell you the thing that will ultimately cause this cycle to move into the next will be a recession. But I can't predict what that'll be. Could it be another coronavirus?”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Generational talent coming in. So, no, I'm a believer that I think now, and it's spinning around the world, and not just spinning in Silicon Valley, the flywheels. I believe that now is going to turn out to be with some of the heightened values an incredibly special time to be putting capital to work in these areas. My word is so wonderful talking to you. This is so positive. I'm glad that I'm bringing the cynicism to this chat. Now, I do have to ask, in terms of like, you mentioned the low interest rate environment, help me out here, and the CAFL flows associated. How does that change when interest rates change? And is that something that I, that fund managers should be thinking about? Listen, for all my optimism, which I do share, I'm a glasses half full person, I'm a glasses half full investor, I think it's hard not to be investing in growth companies. You know, that said, look, I do think we're also in a special time period that won't last. I think the innovation will continue, so I would be long tech, I'd be long innovation for the next 50 years. That said, I do think you're going to see booms and busts in terms of cycles. I've been around, as you mentioned, 23, 24 years in this business, and we've seen multiple cycles. And we'll continue to see.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Plus IRRs for two decades. Well, maybe the cost of capital there should be lower and maybe prices should have been higher. So I put that all together. I think people are behaving more rationally than maybe people think. Can I ask you, I understand that perception in terms of, you know, we never ever modeled for trillion dollar outcomes 10, 20 years ago. The concern that I have suddenly is you have companies that are pre-scale getting $100 million, $200 million. Are we foie-growering startups to a point where actually it deteriorates their quality of execution? I think there are certain circumstances where maybe there's too much capital, too many companies, but no, I actually think we're in the golden age area of innovation right now. And I think that golden age could be decades plus. I think when we look back and historians study the time period that we're living in, I think it's an incredibly special time in terms of all the components of the flywheel spinning in concert. Like, for instance, you have the capital flows, the talent sometimes now multi-”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Statistics, Harry. For instance, what are the five largest companies in the world? Basically, the five largest companies in the world. These are all technology companies that didn't exist 35 years ago. These companies now have trillion dollars, sometimes two trillion dollar market caps. When you were running your math a decade or two decades ago and you said, well, what's an upside case? What happens if I have a super, super home run? That used to be, I'm going to have a $10 billion win. But if you look today, now I have a hundred billion dollar winner. Maybe I have a snowflake on my hands, or maybe I'll have a Google, a $2 trillion company on my hands. And so I do think the entire math should move some, right? Just rationally, you should say if the expected positive outcomes are higher, I should be willing to pay higher prices across the board. Two, I think you have things like low, very low to no interest rates. Real rates are zero in a lot of circumstances. And so I do think there's a lot of things that are driving some of the behavior. And too, is the returns have been really good. I mean, if you look at returns, venture returns, over a couple decades, maybe they're too high, right? I mean, if someone's been compounding and certain funds have been compounding at 30%.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New offices, launch new products. As many shoots I want to take this. The first is like you mentioned that it's simple, you just pay up. Well, that's what everyone seems to be doing today. And Keith Raboy said recently, there are no funds with price discipline. That's quite a bold statement. Do you agree? And how do you view your own relationship to price as a result? I don't fully agree with Keith. I think Keith is amazing and we've been involved in a number of companies together and have incredible respect. I think that's overstating it. I mean, I think he's right to say discipline, but I think for a lot of people, they've been aggressive. Valuations have stretched and there's some situations where there's some eye-popping deals that have done. And there's some people who have lost discipline for sure, maybe completely. I think for the vast majority of people who've been in this business for a while, people are acting mostly reasonably rationally. And in this case, reasonably rationally, could be very high prices. I mean, if you think about it, the same valuation framework maybe that existed a decade ago or two decades ago, you know, maybe that should be revisited. I mean, if you look at a number of...”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And much more speculative. And a lot of those didn't work out. And we had to help wind down some companies. And so you say, how did it impact me? What you realize very quickly, at least going through a time period like that, which shaped me for the rest of my career was doing deal is easy. It's easy to give capital to someone. It's easy to lead around. You just pay the highest price. And if you think about what we do, at the end of the day, we give money to people. And so it's not that hard to give money to people. I don't know if you've tried Harry at scale, but most people will take your money, at least if you're willing to pay usually high price for it. So getting a deal done is easy. What's not easy is how do you turn a dollar into $5? How do you turn a dollar into $10? How do you find the right risk-reward? And what that time period taught me that just doing a deal and being involved with not great companies is the worst thing you could possibly do because that's really painful. I don't know if you've in your career had to let go of a CEO or let go of certain employees, but there's nothing worse than having to do that. And so getting involved in a situation where you don't have to do that, you can do the opposite, which is grow, hire people, expand.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How did seeing both the dot com two thousand eight, some of these very seismic financial environments take place? How did that impact your investing mindset stage, do you think? And I guess the types of companies that you'd like to invest in as a result. It influenced me a lot. I've been lucky in many, many different ways across my life and career. But in particular, joining at the time I joined, which was in 1998, I still got to see the beginning almost pre the dot-com mania. And I got to see the old general Atlantic venture investing and investing before that happened. Then I got to see the explosion and lack of loss of irrationality into 99 in 2000. And then I got to see the crash. And so when I say I was lucky, what was really lucky about that is I was young enough. And then I was tasked with cleaning up some of the challenging companies. And we had a lot less than most. I think we maintained a lot more discipline than a lot of firms, but we still had some investments. We went into some investments that were early even for us.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a little bit, you know, I said, I'm going to merge companies and I'm going to take the public without really knowing what any of that meant. But I was lucky enough to join Morgan Stanley in their tech group and had an incredible two years. I was joined as an analyst. And General Atlantic was a client. And as much as I enjoyed my experience at Morgan Stanley and helped me grow up a bunch in the business world, I didn't love the idea of being an advisor. I wanted to be a principal. We were given all this advice. We'd get really smart, put a whole bunch of different situations, and then would move on to the next. You give some advice and you would move on. And you didn't own your decisions. And so when I had a chance after a couple years, I'd gotten to know a number of the principals at General Atlantic. We had tried to sell one of their companies. And I got to know some of the principals there. They asked me if I would be interested in joining. And they had a two-year program. And I thought that sounded really interesting. It was still technology driven. I wanted to be a principal. I loved growth. I loved the idea of building things. And I thought I'd be there for two years. And that was almost 24 years ago. Having had that incredible insight into multiple different macro cycles is something that I haven't seen.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have a language requirement, and at that point, the language requirement was a foreign language requirement. And the only way to get out of the foreign language requirement was to go in our undergraduate business school. So I double majored in both computer science and went to our undergraduate business school where I took a number of finance classes and I had some incredible finance professors. And so I started to see some of the parallels between finance and computer science. And I fell in love with it. The art of finance, the art of computer science. And when I was graduating, I was looking for a way to combine my interest in finance and business and computer science. And Morgan Stanley had just taken Netscape Public. This was in August of 1995, and I was graduating in 96. And I thought, wow, that sounds really interesting. Is Netscape thing? As part of all that, I joined Morgan Stanley. I was offered an option to join their investment banking group and their tech group focused on technology clients. I didn't really know what I was doing, to be totally honest with you. My mother asked me at the time, she said, why are you going to be a bank teller? I'm like, well, I'm not exactly going to be a bank teller, but I kind of...”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has been a while. Well, first of all, thank you all the way back just for a minute of background. So I was born in South Africa, even though I don't sound South African. I immigrated when I was two and grew up on my formative years outside of Washington, D.C. But what really drove me ultimately in my path is I've always been a bit of a computer geek. In my formative years, I would, this was well pre-mobile phones and really even almost pre- the PC. This was back in the day where Compaq, I think, came out with the first PC and it was bigger than your largest piece of luggage. And I called it a portable computer. I think you had to carry it with like three people and move this thing around. It had like a screen that was like the size of your current mobile screen. And that was the first mobile PC. There are a lot of things that didn't come easy to me. But for whatever reason, computer programming and computer languages came easy to me. And when I went to university, I was looking to be a computer science major. And that's what I did. Although there was one small thing at, I went to University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and there was a requirement at that point that I had.”
2021-10-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Two Largest Changes in the Investing Market Today, Why The Scarce Resource in Venture is Access & Why Investors Are Acting Mostly Rational and Upside Scenario Planning Needs To Change with Anton Levy, Co-President @ General Atlantic · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source